Sales Advice: Sales Market Overview - Q3 2017

As a general overview, the property market in Brackley has followed trends of the South East/Midlands regions. Interestingly, Nationwide Building Society have recently reported that London house prices have fallen for the first time in eight years. Similar lenders have suggested that across the UK, annual price growth slowed to 2%, down from 2.1% in August.

According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) ‘A slowdown in the London and the south east housing market has pulled down the UK average’.

They went onto say that ‘A net balance of just one per cent of surveyors reported prices increasing instead of decreasing in July, down from seven per cent in June’. This was the weakest reading Rics has recorded since March 2013.” Surveyors blamed political uncertainty and the aftermath of tax changes for the lull in London's housing market.

Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at Rics, said: ‘Sales activity in the housing market has been slipping in the recent months and the most worrying aspect of the latest survey is the suggestion that this could continue for some time to come’.

A recent survey among Estate Agents suggested that homes marketed at more than £1m, nearly seven in 10 (68%) of those surveyed reported sale prices coming in below asking prices.

Meanwhile, just over a third said homes marketed at less than £500,000 were sold for less than their original asking price.

From our experience when the market falls it is usually caused by an influx of properties to the market, which in-turn pushes prices down but interestingly the level of houses being marketed has been on the decline nationally for the last two quarters. Given frontline activity has slowed down, it is our opinion that speculative pricing should be avoided. We feel that the market is in a period of readjustment but should, within the next few months, realign itself to a similar level to that of the end of last year.